Yet Another Plot Twist

 A few years ago, during a long heart-to-heart with my husband, he asked me what I needed to become a better writer. I told him I needed time. Time to myself, to write more, instead of grabbing an hour of computer time after the kids were in bed and the dishes washed.

"August 2020," I said with confidence. "When Amelia starts kindergarten. I'll have eight hours a day by myself, and I'll be able to write so much more."

I had been counting down to my youngest child entering kindergarten pretty much ever since we decided we weren't having any more kids. All that time! I was going to accomplish so much!

Well, 2020 has changed everyone's plans, hasn't it? My daughter started kindergarten last month, as scheduled, but over Zoom, not as scheduled. Our district allowed parents to choose whether their children would attend school in-person or online, and I opted for online. Juggling 3 kids' Zoom schedules is not easy, to say the least. It is not a perfect solution, but it was the one I felt was best for us right now. We're all trying to do our best. It's okay if that doesn't look the same for everyone (unless you're refusing to wear a mask in public; you're not doing your best you're just an a-hole).

I'm not getting the extra hours of writing time that I've been dreaming of for years. And I'm sad about it. Some days are harder than others. Some days aren't so bad. I keep reminding myself that this won't last forever, and I will eventually get the time to myself that I need. I managed to write a bunch of books in the small space between the kids' bedtime and mine, and I'll continue to do so. For now. 

What I'm doing lately

Someone shared something on Twitter recently that basically said, "We must not ever invent time travel, because if we did we'd have time travelers here trying to warn us about the mess that is 2020." And then someone replied that maybe the time travelers already came back and fixed things, which would mean that this timeline is actually the improved version. Both of those comments simultaneously made me laugh and cringe with fear. My current WIP is a time travel book, and one of the tenets of time travel in the book is that you can't mess with the past because the created paradoxes render it impossible to do so. But even my time travelers warn the people in the past to stock up on toilet paper in January 2020!

Anyhoo...

Something exciting that I'm currently working on is the 14th Annual Whitney Awards. I was on the committee last year, which I loved, even though our gala in May had to go virtual. I was asked to serve as the committee president this year, which is keeping me busy. But busy about books, and busy working with my awesome committee is a type of busy I love.

I mentioned in my last post that I was hoping to finish the first draft of my time travel WIP for April's Camp NaNoWriMo, and I'm happy to say that I accomplished that goal. Now I'm using all the awesome things I learned during this year's virtual Storymakers conference to finish the second draft during July's session of Camp NaNo. Hold me accountable!

It's been... a year

I love the New Year. I love resolutions, even if I don't keep them, and I love feeling recharged and empowered to achieve my goals.

I started January 2020 feeling exactly that way. And then I got sick. And then a different kind of sick. I had corrective eye surgery, which was a YAY but took about a month before my eyes healed. The medicine I took for one of the sicks in January caused a different type of sick in February. My whole family had the flu. Then we all had a 24-hour stomach bug, one after the other. I started wondering if our new house was cursed.

But we started March healthy! I was so excited to shake off the funk and get back to work on my current book project. And then of course the pandemic made its way to the US. For now, everyone in our family is healthy, and I'm so grateful for that. Social distancing sucks (I just had to tell one of the neighborhood kids that my kids couldn't come out to play), as we all know. It's very important, and will hopefully pay off, but it's draining on the soul and creativity.

I have been making at least some progress on my book, however, and I think the first draft will finally be done at the end of April. I'm doing Camp NaNoWriMo for the extra accountability.

I hope you out there in the Internet are doing well, staying healthy, and are able to be creative in some way every day.